Translating Technology, Science and Health: Public Information Officers as Knowledge Transfer Intermediaries

PIOs (PIOs) link transfer of technology/science/health knowledge between researchers and journalists. PIOs’ orientation toward acquiring technology/science/health knowledge is important to PIOs’ choices of education, training, and occupational experience. The purpose of this study was (1) to conceptualize a way to measure such orientation, using descriptive data from an Internet survey of a random sample of PIOs to construct an exploratory scale to measure technology/science/health orientation (TSHO) and (2) to test the constructed TSHO scores as predictors of PIOs’ job performance. Results showed respondent PIOs’ calculated TSHO scores to range from 0 to 5 (out of a possible maximum of 6), with a mean of 2.38 and a mode of 2. TSHO score was a statistically significant predictor for variety of story topics covered by PIOs but not of number of scientist sources used in their information subsidies. Further research and analysis are needed to validate scale construction and to test its predictive ability across additional samples.